Some Modern Errors

Dr. Malcolm Brennan

When a Catholic is slovenly about his respect for divine revelation, he begins to drift from his secure moorings. If he does not plot his position regularly according to the lighthouse of truth, which is the Faith, then tides, currents, and the winds of error move him, imperceptibly to himself, towards dangerous rocks and deadly shoals, or toward the uncharted, tempest-ridden and unforgiving sea.

That is to say, carelessness about doctrine leads to error, and error to corrupt morals.

When not just an individual but the Church in general plays fast and loose with dogma, the single tragedy becomes a universal calamity. And the calamity is upon us. Or, to switch from a nautical to an agricultural metaphor: The sky is black with chickens coming home to roost.

Among the errors and heresies which plague the Church today, three are worth taking a look at. They are reincarnation, spiritism, and Pelagianism. A formal and complete treatment of these errors will have to be sought elsewhere; here is offered only a practical look at how these errors insinuate themselves into the minds and hearts of the unwary, and what consequences they have.

Reincarnation

The notion that each of us lived a life before this one, and will live another life after this one has ended (as maybe an ape or a zebra or a holy cow or another human being), is gaining ground in the U.S.—according to a recent Gallup poll. The belief is held by 18% of those who attend church services regularly, 19% of protestants, 21% of those who claim membership in a church of some kind, 22% of 'born again' Christians, and at the top of the list—you guessed it —24% of Catholics.

Of course, Catholics who know that each soul is created individually at about the time of conception, and that each life ends confronting death, judgment, heaven and hell (the Last Four Things), do not fall prey to such old nonsense. Reincarnation is sometimes called Pythagorism, after the ancient Greek mathematician who preached it.

Like other heresies, reincarnation solves certain 'problems.' Like the problem of God's strict justice: If I were God, I would always give people another chance, letting them continue running the course of life until they got it right. And surely God must wish to be as kindly and tolerant as I am, or He is not worthy of my belief.

Another 'problem' that reincarnation solves is that of objective right and wrong. Some Catholics (traditionalists, notoriously) are so rigid, so coldly inflexible, so mercilessly unforgiving, and so out of touch with the real world complexities of modern life, that they would send droves of conscientious people into hell for merely technical violations of abstract rules. On the other hand, the reasoning goes, God has in fact laid out some pretty stiff traditionalist principles of conduct (no murder, no idolatry, no adultery, etc.). Reincarnation solves this dilemma of a God Who is both compassionate (i.e., a modernist) and a traditionalist: we can say that God sees some crimes as absolutely and unconditionally abhorrent, but also that the criminals are never finally condemned but rather are recycled.

Reincarnation muddles all sorts of things —abortion, for example. If you abort your baby, you don't do him any really serious harm, for God will just run him through the system again and again, until eventually he gets himself born to a mother who really wants him.

Care for the infirm and for others whose quality of life is not up to standard [whose standard?] is similarly confused, so confused that euthanasia and suicide, like abortion, begins to look like an act of kindness—as indeed it does to our heathen friends and neighbors.

You can be sure there is a theologian out there bringing the Corporal Works of Mercy up to date "in the light of Vatican II," with abortion and euthanasia (including do-it-yourself euthanasia, which is suicide) on his new list. The New York Times is going to write him up pretty soon and CBS will make him a star, and with his reputation thus established in the 'real world,' he'll start giving seminars in Catholic hospitals and nursing homes. Watch out for Grandma!

Reincarnation is deadly also for the spiritual life, naturally. You can regret your sins, in the same way that you regret that your parents and your wife and your boss and your confessor have treated you so badly. Regret, yes; but why repent? If you believe in reincarnation, you can embrace the slattern despair and take comfort that you don't have to try any more, and don't have to undo any crimes. You can get a bumper sticker or a T-shirt or a baseball cap that says: "Life is a lot easier since I gave up hope." This life may have turned out badly, you can tell yourself, but another one will be along sooner or later, and it is bound to be better than this one, according to the laws of progress and evolution —laws which even God must obey.

Spiritism

Been to any seances lately? No? But surely you are into automatic writing? or fortune telling? or sorcery and magic? No? Well, you are falling further behind the times! You need to get down to Ghosts R Us¹. and pick up a ouija board.

Recent movies bout 'paranormal phenomena.' like Ghost and Flatliners, are not just frivolous titillations from Tinsel Town; they are part of a major new burst of interest in and practice of calling forth the spirits of the dead.

Catholics, of course, are right up there in the front of the fad, according to 30 Days. Some clergy even justify the use of mediums and occult rituals for contacting the dead. Such practices and the experiences they engender, they argue, can persuade the jaded faithful about the reality of 'another world.'

There are reputable Catholics in good standing who write books about their attempts to contact a departed loved one—successful attempts. The authors tell of encouragement from confessors and spiritual directors, and guidance from them and other men of God on how to interpret messages from 'the other side.' And their books may be purchased from literature racks in the vestibules of churches or ordered from the catalogues of reputable Catholic publishers.

The Catechism of Pope Pius X says, "All spiritist practices are illicit because they are superstitious and often they are not immune to diabolical intervention." Lumen Gentium, though only in a footnote (#47, n. 2), endorses such prohibitions. Spiritist practices attempt to bring forth the souls of the dead to gratify our curiosity or, in the worst cases, to use them for our advantage over others; they are different from the Catholic practices of praying for the souls in purgatory or of invoking the assistance of saints in heaven.

These practices derive from true charity and from the venerable dogma of the communion of saints. Calling up the soul of Aunt Edna to find out whether she took the fatal dose of medicine deliberately, or mistakenly, or whether perhaps someone switched the bottles on her—such information gratifies our curiosity, but for us to acquire it in no way helps Aunt Edna, nor does it provide us with help in glorifying God or saving our souls.

Whatever doubtful information comes from Aunt Edna (or a demon!), we know that "it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins," and we know likewise, from sources more reliable than Aunt Edna, what we must do to save our souls.

Pelagianism

When you look up Pelagianism in a theology book, you wonder how anyone could take it seriously. Pelagius, a fifth century monk, held that we ourselves, individually, not God, cause our own salvation. But if you look at how the heresy develops today, you can see it for the virulent disease it is.

The modern Pelagian shows himself by exalting morality over doctrine —on the premise that what people do can save or damn their souls, while what they think is their own business and should not be dictated by another.

In a time when no doctrine of the Church is unchallenged by approved theologians and canonically appointed pastors, and when no one who can speak with authority has the strength of his convictions to do so (if he has convictions), sincere but misguided Catholics (like their protestant neighbors) despair of finding what is true, and they settle for doing what is right.

When they cannot find out what the Church teaches (because of widespread and institutionalized deceit, to a large extent) the best they feel they can do is to treat people fairly, love their own, and help the unfortunate. And God, they say (slipping further into heresy), has no right to ask any more of them.

Without sound doctrine, however, their morality inevitably becomes skewered, to say the least, which is a fatal disorder for those whose only hope is morality. This seems to explain why it is not rare to find 'Catholics' who endorse divorce, contraception, abortion, euthanasia and other moral monstrosities. Their morality is flabby because they have no doctrinal backbone.

A major symptom of the Pelagian heresy is its aversion to the doctrine of original sin. Luckily for Pelagian Catholics (but unfortunately for orthodox ones), the topic of original sin seldom comes up, and so they are spared the necessity of repudiating a formal dogma of the faith.

Without original sin, there is no curse from God upon the human race, and therefore no need of a Savior to redeem us from sin. If we are "born free," salvation or damnation depends not on the Sacrifice of the Redeemer, but on how we behave, on our own personal decisions.

Our great defender against the Pelagian heresy is Our Immaculate Mother. Her exemption from original sin, by being an exemption, means that the sin of Adam is a normal inheritance of every human being. And this immaculate state is certainly not a just payment she earned by her moral conduct or a state that she achieved by her own efforts; it was an unearned gift of God.

Original sin and the Pelagian heresy are not topics confined to ecclesiastical circles. The phrase, "born free," before it was a movie and a song, was the opening salvo against the Church's doctrine of original sin in a famous eighteenth century essay by J. J. Rousseau, one of the 'brains' behind the French Revolution, which exalted the Rights of Man over those of God. Some say that the democratic theory of self-government is a form of the Pelagian heresy, at least when it exalts man's will over God's—as often happens in practice.

A very contemporary manifestation of a Pelagian hatred of original sin is to be found in the logo of Apple Computer. It is an apple with a bite missing. Apples have been dear to secularists since one fell onto the head of Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century and gave him the idea of the law of gravity, which he was able to describe with mathematics and which became a major starting point of modern science. It seemed to them ironic—a sort of joke on God—that an apple, the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, should generate so much knowledge.

Apple Computer's logo, the apple with the missing bite, goes a step further and asserts that, with computers, man's initiative can experience the knowledge and power which men had formerly thought to be the preserve of God alone.

1. Your local Modernist vestibule?